The press release for this recording provides some nice phrases that encapsulate the approach to music making on this CD: a ‘polyphonic muddle’ that is played by people with ‘big ears and good intuition’ who create music that ‘moves rapidly in changing directions by consensus’. Emmeluth is a young Danish sax player and composer, living in Oslo and this recording shows that she already has a complete grasp of the dynamics of avant-garde composition and a sense of the space in which improvising musicians can flourish. While the press release emphasizes the collaborative nature of the playing here, the album cover credits her with compositions, and there is certainly a feeling of single authorial intent across all of the pieces.

The titles of several of the pieces on this CD point to movement underwater where conventional restrictions due to gravity no longer apply, and there is a strong sense that, in the ways in which each piece develops, the music here is about resisting conventional gravity. However, this is not to suggest that there is any sense of willful or anarchic refusal to toe lines deemed normal; rather the pieces have a deeper feeling of exploring regions that lie on the edge of convention, and do so in a spirit of inquiry rather than resistance. So, for example, track 3 ‘Kolibri’ has an ecstatic burst of improvised sax against which the drums pummel an enthusiastic cycle of response, or track 6, ‘Pixels’ pitches vibrant sax against scattering guitar lines. Throughout the pieces, you get the idea that here is a composer who has assimilated the theory and logic of 20th Century composition and still retains a childlike enthusiasm for noises that lie outside the norm. So each of the pieces in this set have a definite structure (which is always beautifully crafted) together with an invitation to the players to find the places to break the composition; the improvised sections seek to find the points to strain the structure, while never quite overcoming the ability of the structures to resist these attacks.

And it is this latter impression that creates a strong response in me as a listener, as if I am willing the structure of each tune to take on and deal with the various incursions upon it. Whether or not this is meant to signify a deeper meaning, I’m not sure. What I do know is that these pieces tell me that here is a composer fully in control of her musical ideas and a saxophone player fully in control of her instrument.